When Jonny Gomes showed up to at Fort Myers for Red Sox spring training in March he had a few scraggly whiskers growing from his face. Seven months and 100 wins later, you might mistake the Red Sox dugout for a lumberjack convention.

Gomes now laughs at what he innocently started – but the beards have come to symbolize a changed team with a new attitude. Let’s face it, six months ago when Buchholz’s beard looked like the facial hair of a97 year old Italian woman in the North End, not a single fan, writer, blogger or barber in Boston believed in this team. But the guys in the dugout did. And those beards have given us quite a ride.

With the Sox beating the Rays last night to move on to the ALCS, the beards are making their final push for eternal playoff glory. Here are Spogo’s power rankings for Boston’s best beards:

MVB (Most Valuable Beard) –
Jonny Gomes

While it’s far from the sexiest beard on the team, Gomes is the one that started it all. The messy, brownish orange facial hair combined with his Kevin Garnett-esque crazy eyes and tatted up arms make for one intimidating dude. I’d be scared to walk past him on the street, let alone pitch to that animal.

The Golden Beard – Mike Carp

Some say ginger, I say golden. This guy knows how to do two things: hit pinch hit grand slamsand grow a beard that rivals the mane of Mufasa.

The Silver Fox – David Ross

If Just for Men had a product that made my facial hair gray, I’d buy it. David’s perfectly grayed “soup-catcher” must attract beautiful, mature, sophisticated women from miles away. Silver Fox swag indeed.

The Dirt Dog – Dustin Pedroia

The heart and soul. The engine. The spark. It all starts with Pedey. His dirt dog attitude defines the character of this team – and so does his beard. A thick, burly and well groomed mug that even Ron Swansonwould be jealous of.

The Triple Crown – Mike Napoli

The triple crown is awarded to the player with the longest, most manly, well-groomed beard. Napoli’s beard rivals the likes of Karl Marx, Jesus Christ, and the cast of Duck Dynasty. It also mimics his attitude as a player – a fearless, quiet leader.

Got Beard?

Tweet or Facebookus your playoff beard and we’ll send the best beards a Spogo T!

I’ll get us going…

I have a long way to go…I hope.

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After three weeks of giving sports fans free wings, beers and nachos, Spogo has taken to the new iOS7 diet and trimmed down (just a bit, don’t worry you can still put cheese on it). Download the update right here:

Why the wait? We wanted to hold off until two tools we use to build Spogo, Rubymotion and Pixate, got the thumbs up for the GM over at Apple. That only happened this past week.

Here are the four places where we’ve shed the most pounds:

1. Slab to bold

We’ve gone from a chunky slab serif to a bold font in our headings and navigation titles. You likey?

2. More color, less gradient

We didn’t have to go with a third jersey or “throwback” to give us a new, fresh look. Our color palette (green, blue, white, orange, gray) is right in Apple’s design wheelhouse. We’ve been able to keep those basic colors; we just tweaked the grays a bit to match.

3. No more 5 o’clock shadow

4. Lean and mean

When titles are redundant, let the content do the talking. We removed titles on certain screens where they didn’t matter. You know what you’re doing. We don’t think you’re dumb.

Here’s a little sneak peak, but you’ll have to download it yourself for the full show:

New Feature!

Last but not least, we’ve added an awesome new feature. Our Activity tab used to enable you to see your own wagers, wins, losses, rewards and more. Now, we’ve implemented a filter that lets you see Spogo players around you as well. This makes playing with friends even more fun, and is the framework for making Spogo even more social in future releases.

Thanks for being patient while we worked on the new version of Spogo. We hope you enjoy it and will continue using your feedback to make it better and better.